Look in my eyes! What do you see?? I'm the Cult of Personality.
I always have a rock soundtrack running through my head as I germinate these stories, and yesterday it was Living Colour's 1988 track blaring through my head. This as I read an interview with Leo DiCaprio bemoaning the fact that earth only has nine years left. Leo is, of course, a high school drop-out, but full credit to him for earning his GED. This is the guy that is telling us about science... Leo never even stayed in school long enough to take an AP science course, But he's the ultimate embodiment of the Cult of Personality that has overtaken the country.
I saw Living Colour at Page Auditorium at my alma mater, Duke University in (I think) 1990, and they just blew the roof off that place. Corey Glover's vocals and Vernon Reid's blistering guitar were awe-inspiring.
I received an invitation this week -- I did not participate, shockingly -- from the Duke alumni group inviting me to listen to a presentation which: President Price and Dean Steelman will discuss how climate action is being institutionalized at Duke and how Duke is empowering the boldest thinkers and forging innovative partnerships to tackle the climate crisis.
The university is now caught up in the very same cult that has entrapped Leo and many others and the leading lights of the Biden Administration, and is pushing this cultish mentality.
Here's the thing. The planet is not melting.
Unlike these Hollywood types, I travel the world incessantly and I see it, as well as feel it. I am in Lima, Peru now. It's warm, as you would expect from a Southern Hemisphere town in January. It's normal!
OK, what about Greenland? Well, Google tells me that in the capital Nuuk -- I have heard good things about the nightlife there -- the high Thursday was 18, with a low of 12 and snow in the forecast. Today, 13/12. It's Greenland for goodness sake, and it is supposed to be cold.
But that's the fifth leg of the narrative stool. Hollywood, academia, politicians, ESG-crazed mutual fund fee-chasers and the ever-unbiased U.S. media. Only academia is populated with scientists, but also, sadly, today is almost completely populated with groupthink. Real scientists like Bjorn Lomborg can't even get a spot on TV, although the Wall Street Journal does feature his excellent work.
As Leo spouted something about "fossil fuel companies" and how Exxon Mobil (XOM) management somehow duped the world, that's what we're left with. Conspiracy theories, pseudo-science and Hollywood feature films.
There is an alternative. My HOAX portfolio is still tearing the cover off the ball. As the Nasdaq gets punished by higher interest rates this week, the gap between the performance of HOAX and the Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) -- The Stagger, as I call it -- is now a mere 30 percentage points.
This is the golden age of... something. But the stock market does notice explosive growth in cash flows, even if they would rather spout "woke" clichés like the ones in Larry Fink's annual letter for BlackRock (BLK) . Exxon and Chevron (CVX) both hit 52-week highs Thursday.
Cash flow never lies, and no matter what they say at cocktail parties, fund managers will always follow them. That's why XOM is trading at a 2.5 year high now... because oil futures are hovering near a seven-year high. XOM's cash flows will easily cover its recently raised 88 cent per quarter dividend, management's recently initiated buyback plan, and they could probably buy a few shares of ARKK, too. They won't.
Why? Because oil discoveries, according to Rystad Energy, hit a 75-year low last year. It's all interconnected. As capital flows away from the oil industry, the threat of overproduction just disappears.
I am pragmatic, not dogmatic.
Don't ever let a single-modality outlook cloud your investing behavior. It's a great big world out there. From personal experience I can tell you, despite the many horrible things humans have done to the earth over the incredibly small portion of her 4.5 billion-year lifetime that we have inhabited her, she's still fine.
